


Things my mama taught me

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, TSC Prompt 296
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4900861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Clayton women remember their mother in very different ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Written for theorgyarmada’s challenge Revolution: The Second Coming to fill both claims for Prompt 296: “We should have stuck with hunting bounties,” for Adam/Mia and Miles/Nora. (I originally claimed Adam/Mia/Miles/Nora but that didn’t want to happen.)

Mia Clayton has never forgotten those things her mama taught her: men are useless, family is a trap, and always, always work alone. And yet, here she is.

Strung up in a Plains Nation camp with Mr Biceps for Brains for company, and not even on her own merits. No – this whole epic clusterfuck is about sister, which means it’s _really_ about Miles Matheson.

Mia spits, then curses herself for wasting good saliva on the giant dick. Nora and her passion for long-and-glum never ceases to amaze, because her sister is the smartest woman she knows. The most dangerous. Kept them alive through the chaos of the first days after the lights went out, then carved a life out of that chaos.

The fact that she walked away from that life – not just once, but three times over – defies all comprehension. No one is that good in bed.

“You right back there?”

Biceps for Brains, hung like a horse, and sweet with it, but you don't see HER making stupid, life altering decisions, do you?

(And really, given the choice? Who would pick the Butcher over golden, smiling Sebastian Monroe? You can’t tell her Nora didn’t have the means or opportunity there. Mia did okay, but President or stableboy, Nora’s fragile beauty made men a whole new level of stupid.)

Maybe that was the problem, Mia muses. Nora never did like stupid much, even though it usually worked in their favour. She liked people who could keep up with her, people who were as dangerous as she was, and those kind of people were in short supply. Sweet Frank never had a chance – it was always Miles, and they were always doomed.

We should have just stuck with hunting bounties, Mia fumes, and waits for her captors to turn up and decide their fate. The rescue was going to be so freaking humiliating.

Miles would probably come charging in with his big swords and Nora would hug her and then launch into a massive great lecture, and then Mia would have to deal with the fact her sister was a fugitive from justice who had a huge reward hanging over her head, and yet, she still came through.

Because that’s the fourth thing she knows. Nora loves her unconditionally, and will always come through for her. “I’m your big sister,” she’ll say, and will kiss her on the forehead just the way Mama used to do. Will hold her close and pretend that she’s not crying, she’s just got dust in her eyes.

Then she’ll walk away, because she has chosen Miles and the Rebels, and Mia will chase anyone – anyone – for a reward that big, and family is a trap, after all.

Adam struggles with the ropes binding them to the pole, and she can feel the sweat trickling down between her breasts as they wait. She cries out in distress, and tries not to roll her eyes as Adam makes a pathetic attempt at doing the same.

They’ve got to buy it, or she won’t come. And Mia hasn’t spent four months infiltrating a goddamn war clan to have the whole caper spoilt by the fact this lummox can’t act.

Monroe will pay well for Miles and Nora, but her new masters will pay even better.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Something’s wrong.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Mia is tied up in there with a whole camp of Clansman milling around outside. That’s pretty much the definition of wrong.” Nora can feel her cool slipping away, the twisting beast in her belly getting the upper hand every time another Clansmen pushes his way into the tent below. Miles acting squirrelly doesn’t help.

He takes a deep breath and she braces herself for tact. Miles only bothers to moderate his bullshit when he knows that whatever he’s about to say will devastate her. This promises to be right up there with “I don’t love you,” and “Just leave me to rot” and “I can’t do this anymore.”

“I’m not sure this is what we think it is.”

Nora stops herself from lashing out. This is just more of the old bullshit between them, Mia’s ill-disguised hostility triggering the misanthrope in Miles. Mia, he’d always believed, would sell her own uncle for a buck. Mia was selfish, and entitled, and a little too interested in currying favour with the kind of people who liked to cash in their chips.

He wasn’t wrong, exactly. She’d accused her sister of all those things too, and if this felt like a trap, well it probably was.

It didn’t mean the bait was in on it.

Just because there weren’t enough guards stationed around the tent. Just because Mia had been drifting in and out of New Vegas for longer than she could remember without getting caught. Just because her newest partner was as big as an ox but about as smart as one too.

It didn’t add up.

Not that it matters, Nora sighs. That’s her sister down there. They’ll charge in, do what they have to get her out, then deal with the fallout later.

Miles tenses beside her and pushes himself to standing, sliding his swords into the twin scabbards. The weariness in his eyes tells her he probably figured out what was going on even before she did, but it doesn’t matter.

He knows she’s going. And trap or no trap, betrayal or no betrayal – he’ll be right behind her.

The awkward conversation can wait ‘til later. Much later, perhaps, because she’d almost forgotten how warm and safe it felt to have someone at her back. How heady it was, that unthinking support. How much it deserved a long, wet, ”thank you”, and a fast, hard, “we’re better together than apart”.

Nora bites her lip and recalculates the odds. Tries not to let the tide of arousal drown her common sense. Moans a little at the memory of just how good some of those conversations had been, Miles pushing her up against a tree after Libertyville, and distracting her with his tongue for _hours_ as they waited for the signal at Williamsburg.

Fuck it. Mia can wait.

“Let’s give it another fifteen minutes,” she says, and Miles frowns, but drops back down beside her.

“My bones are getting too old for this,” he grumbles, and “how is waiting – oh. Seriously?”

“Just for old times sake,” Nora smiles as she discovers him already hard. She hadn’t been the only one thinking of all the times they had done this. “Scranton or Chattanooga?”

His groan rockets through her and she is unbuckling his belt with shaking hands by the time he manages to answer.

“You sure about this?”

“You know as well as I do Mia is trying to take us in. I’m going to be pissed for days after I have to tell her that, so yes, I’m sure.”

“I’d help you without this – you know that, right?”

She does. It’s one of the reasons she wants him.

But only one, Nora thinks as she rakes her fingernails down his chest before teasing them over his cock. He’s scrabbling at her jeans, unable to focus for bucking into her hand.

We should have stuck with hunting bounties, she thinks faintly. This divided loyalty bullshit is for the birds.

Because her sister looks at her with her mother’s eyes and her father’s duplicity. And Miles? Miles can’t pass an emotion to help himself, but fires her blood in the way no one else ever did.

And the thing about being Nora Clayton is that she’s good at so many things, except the one thing that really counts. Putting Nora Clayton first.

“Chattanooga,” she grins as whips her t-shirt over her head then stretches for him, blatantly twisting her own nipples. That’s where it all started, after all. Was it really seven years ago?

She had stomped into General Matheson’s tent to tell him they were over, she was out, wouldn’t even hunt bounties for him anymore. She’d let him make her come – twice, in fact – before she told him she was leaving anyway. He’d shrugged, and she thought that had meant he didn’t care, then he floored her with a muttered confession that she’d been waiting to hear for three years.

“I know,” she said, and it was true, too. And she loved him. But she had to put herself – and Mia – first. And that meant leaving.

He’d nodded, accepting her decision with sad smile. Then he had made her come twice more, this time without an agenda. The sweetest, hottest sex of her life.

And if she’s putting Nora first? She’s getting herself some more of that. She’s older now, more sensible – she can work with Miles, and sleep with him, without falling head over heels in love. Like mama always said: men have their uses, seek strength in numbers, and always, always remember: family is everything.

 


End file.
